Airplane in a box

Yingling Aviation has launched a new international aircraft shipping enterprise for Cessna 172 Skyhawks, 182 Skylanes and 206 Stationairs. The firm, which was named the first Cessna Authorized Service Center in 1946, made its initial shipment of five Cessna 182s to Hanseo University in South Korea at the end of February. The university will use the planes for flight instruction and basic transportation.

The aircraft, which were dismantled and packed in shipping containers at Yingling’s Wichita facilities, were loaded on trucks for the first leg of the journey. They were transferred to a train in Kansas City for the trip to Long Beach, Calif., where they were placed on a container ship bound for South Korea. The entire odyssey took about two weeks.

Yingling’s Director of Quality Assurance Christopher Mick developed the specialized shipping containers and oversees the disassembly and packing of the aircraft. A veteran of 10 years in the U.S. Army, he came to Yingling from Ryan International Airlines in August 2004 to oversee product quality and regulatory compliance. “”These aircraft will arrive with about five hours on the Hobbs meter, rather than 60 or 70 following a circuitous ferry flight,”” he said. “”Of course, the cost of shipping the airplanes is also much less than paying for a ferry flight.””